The number plates from the car JFK was killed in just sold for $100,000

John F Kennedy and his wife Jackie in the presidential motorcade at Dallas, before his assassination. Photo: Keystone/Getty Images.

As far as memorabilia goes, it’s a rather macabre souvenier, but the number plates from the limousine former US president John F Kennedy was travelling in when he was assassinated in Dallas in 1963 sold at auction overnight for $US100,000 ($AU142,000).

One of the plates from the car JFK died in. Source: Heritage Auctions

The plates were sold to an anonymous collector by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions a fortnight before the 42nd anniversary of Kennedy’s murder in an auction that included a range of the 35th president’s personal effects, including a 1951 passport,issued to JFK when he as a congressman, sold for $US55,500. His wife, Jacqueline’s passport sold for $US45,000 and showing the “Camelot” flame still burns brightly, even the original handwritten and typed wedding invitation lists of John F. and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy sold for $US6,562.50

The license plates were almost lost to history after they were thrown in a bin. Willard C. Hess, whose company converted the Lincoln Continental, was repairing the limo after the assassination, retrieved the plates from the garbage and asked FBI agents examining the car if he could keep them.

They said yes. The Dallas Morning News reports that Hess held onto them until his death in 200-, bequeathing them to his daughter Jane Walker, who kept them in a junk drawer, occasionally getting them out to show friends.

The selling price far exceeded the $US40,000 estimate.

The cover of the Titanic menu. Source: Heritage Auctions

But it wasn’t the most expensive item sold – a first class dinner menu from the last dinner on the Titanic sold for $US118,750 ($AU168,600), well above the $US88,000 ($AU125,000) one of just four surviving first class lunch menus from the final day fetched in September.